Miss Ghana winners share ‘demeaning’ tales suffered from organisers

Former beauty queens of the Miss Ghana pageant, have blown the lid on some of the disturbing experiences they were made to go through by organisers, Exclusive Events Ghana headed by Inna Mariam Patty.

Winner of Miss Ghana 2010, Stephanie Karikari revealed how Inna Mariam Patti refused to put her on a billboard because her appearance did not please her senses.

According to her, the organiser declined to project her with the explanation that “sponsors had told her that I was not beautiful enough to be on the billboard.”

The revelation has come at a time some past winners of the event as well as Stephanie herself, have opened the lid on some dehumanising treatments they were made to go through including sexual and verbal abuses.

Stephanie won the 2010 pageant organised then by Media Whizz Kids but a transfer of ownership rights to Exclusive Events Ghana means she would have to work with a new management team headed by Inna Maria Patty.

She told host of the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Kojo Yankson on Monday that although she was not sexually abused, she never had a good working relationship with Madam Patty.

“Inna Patty and I never had a relationship right from day one…we couldn’t agree on anything because she wanted to use it for her personal benefit.

“Being the first to go through Inna I had issues but not the sex thing with Inna. It’s unfortunate that queens after me have gone through worse [because] I thought I was going through the worst,” she said.

The experiences

Her other colleagues, Guiseppina Nana Akua Baafi (Miss Ghana 2013) and Antoinette Delali Kemavor (Miss Ghana 2015) however, said there were attempts to make them sleep with influential men in order to meet their task of raising funds for the organisers.

According to Giuseppina, she was asked a couple of times by the organiser to attend private meetings with influential with men as late as 11pm to talk about her herself and her project but she declined because she felt “it was too late”. They were usually told to “be nice and talk about you,” she said.

“I never got to go to those meetings because it was late,” Giuseppina stated.

She also revealed how she raised a sum of GHC10,000 that she was tasked to raise by organisers each month to finance and social project which she never saw being used for such purpose. She decided to abandon the project because she never saw what the first GHC10,000 she raised was used for.

Giusepinna abandoned the task and opted to solicit for products and items from organisations to donate to orphanages instead.

Antoinette shared a similar experience said Inna Patty tasked her to raise a sum of $10,000 to pay her registration fee to enable her contest the Miss World pageant in 2016.

She managed to raise just half of that and the organisers topped it up for her to participate in the global event.

The beauty queen recounted how she was asked to have dinner with a wealthy man in his home and when she thought she had to leave because “it was after 10pm” the man “passed a comment that ‘I thought you were sleeping here’,” she told Kojo Yankson.

Asked why she did not report to the person who arranged the said meeting, Antoinette retorted: “I didn’t ask Inna Patty about it because I wasn’t expecting her to tell me why she did that.”

Emergency meeting

Meanwhile, Myjoyonline.com sources say organisers of the pageant called an emergency meeting as late as 10pm Sunday after the story broke.

Details of the meeting were not made available but the source said an official release will be issued before the close of business Monday.

Business News of Wednesday, 19 December 2018
Source: Myjoyonline.com
2018-12-19
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